CAPOEIRA IN MY LIFE

One weekend, something very unusual happened — my parents' house went completely quiet. The reason? My mom had gone on a trip with her side of the family to Salvador, the capital of Bahia — and also the first capital of Brazil, back when Columbus (yeah, that Italian guy who was supposedly heading to India) was making his moves.

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When she got back, the silence was paid off with something very curious: she brought this weird bow-and-arrow-looking thing. Turned out, it was a berimbau — the main instrument used in Capoeira. I had no clue what it was! I was like 8 or 9 years old, and back then the world was totally different — no internet, barely any tech. I mean, we didn’t even have fax at home. Getting information was not as easy as it is today.

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So yeah, my mom gave me a berimbau (a pretty cool one, by the way — super colourful, the kind you still find in Salvador). I’d never seen anything like it. As a kid, I just started messing around with it right away, without knowing anything about how it worked. For years, I kept playing with it.

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Eventually, I met Sérgio Bonfim, a.k.a. Kinho — I still say today he was my first Capoeira master. He was just a year older than me, but already had loads of experience. He taught me how to play the berimbau properly and introduced me to Capoeira music.

A few years later, me and some friends from down the street had this idea to create our own Capoeira Academy (that’s what we call a Capoeira school). I still remember the names of everyone who came to train with us.

 

We used to meet at Kummar’s house, a family originally from India who ended up in Brazil. The crew was made up of me, Munan (Rajesh Kumar), Nen (Pankaj Kumar), Josa (José Alberto), Ivan Cabeção, Ancelmo, Adilson… We practiced every week together. Kinho became our mestre, and he even named me a Contra-Mestre, which is the step before becoming a mestre. We were just a bunch of kids with energy to spare and a dream to build something.

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Later on, I continued my Capoeira journey with Adilson at the Skala Centre in Itabuna. Funny thing — I once won a contest at college as the "coolest dude", and the prize was a voucher to a local gym. Guess what? That gym had Capoeira classes! I spent years training there. At the same time, I was also into Kung Fu (Jeet Kune Do) with Beto, Adilson’s brother.

During college, I had a good friend — Jorge Bere — who taught me a lot about Capoeira and martial arts in general. He was from Ferradas, the same neighborhood in Itabuna where Jorge Amado was born.

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Capoeira (and candomblé, too) were my first doors into the world of music. And that’s how my early years in Capoeira went.